Many municipal water supplies are disinfected with chloramine now, not chlorine. (That's Texas law, for example.) The difference is that chlorine evaporates, while chloramine does not. It can only be removed by chemical reaction or charcoal filtration. For that reason, I avoid tap water as much as possible. But one nice thing about it in a survival situation is that, based on personal experience at least, it does not go bad.

Bogwalker, a Washington state native with a degree in ecological agriculture who built much of the compound with her own two hands, says she considers herself much more of a homesteader than a prepper. Still, she says she’s seen many women who identify as preppers take her courses. “I think no matter where you are on the spectrum with your definition of prepper, a lot of the people, probably 65 percent of my students, are curious about the future,” Bogwalker says.

Cooking fats can be substituted in most cases with the exception being frying. Some oils and fats have a lower smoke point than others. I have never had any luck using olive oil for trying to fry potatoes to a crispy state but grape seed oil, peanut oil, or lard does just fine. Pie crusts made from lard, flour, salt, and a little water are really good. You really don’t need butter to make a flaky crust if you have lard.

What research have you done on this? Are you simply making assumptions, because that's what it sounds like. The needs of someone trying to grow a couple tomatoes so the kids can see what they look like growing on the vine one summer are verrrrry different from the concerns of preppers who are thinking in terms of potentially supplying food for their family for many years.

The 3 most important immediate needs are water availability, water purity and food to feed the family. I am starting a business to be an authorized dealer for items that meet these needs – as a way to help out friends, neighbors who have not started preparing for immediate needs if the power goes off for more than a week. Hand pump on the well head, Water purifiers and a home freeze dryer which will pay for itself in a year or 2 based on the prices of freeze died foods. I really, really want to freeze dry my own highly nutritious food without preservatives instead of buying commercial freeze dried foods.
“It was never offered as a contrary movement to hippies by any means,” Mitchell explains. “I think maybe it was just one more expression of ‘You can try something new now.’” Survivalism was and still is, Mitchell believes, a product of late capitalist consumer society, premised on drumming up panic about various hypothetical catastrophes and furnishing people with products that will allegedly help survive them.
Heat: Emergency blankets made out of a metallic Mylar material are small and handy, and can double as ground cover or tarps for shelter. We like this pack of six Mylatech XL blankets. For a great bonus option, we love this indoor heater that uses the same small propane tanks as the camping stoves. Avoid cheaper ones that aren’t safe for indoor use — two weeks after first publishing this guide, a neighboring tent in our campground caught on fire because of a cheap propane heater that tipped over while a family slept inside.

I use Bob’s Red Mill Buttermilk Powder.It is about $10 a bag but it goes a very long way. It will make 45 cups of sweet cream buttermilk. I did some research and vacuum sealed buttermilk powder can last up to 10 years. Of course this is dependent on storage conditions. Keeping it out of direct sunlight and extreme heat is required to get a long shelf life. Even under mediocre conditions I would expect 5 years. There is a lot of varying opinions on shelf life unfortunately. Thanks for reading!

These have a pull ring pop top. The ones I bought have a 3 year expiration date. I have eaten lots of things that were expired. These will still be good years after that. The Wal-Mart Great Value brand costs a little less but the Libby’s tastes better. I eat these right out of the can. I have also added them to soup and pasta. Cost: $0.50. (11 cents per oz). 40 cans for 20 dollars
I would never advise you start a survival food stockpile with something like this, but once you have a year or two of long-shelf life survival foods you can grab at a grocery store, and you’ve saved up enough in emergency funds of course, investing in something like this is, in my opinion, serious peace of mind. You, again, hopefully won’t have to use it, but if the time comes when you do, and you run out of your year or two supply at hand, this would come in really handy, especially since it will a quarter of a century before it even remotely starts going off.
I connected with Jennifer through Daisy Luther, the Virginia-based writer and survival preparedness expert behind the blog The Organic Prepper, which boasts more than 30,000 followers on Facebook and roughly 32,000 monthly visits on Pinterest. Jennifer says she learned a lot about prepping from the site and is a member of its affiliated private Facebook group, which Luther says is nearly 77 percent women. (Luther and other bloggers I spoke with for this story say that while they approach survivalism from a female perspective, they’ve encountered no small number of men who are interested in these practices as well.)

I agree with the previous comment of Goal Zero being stupidly overpriced. It’s an easy target as they’re in most stores, but if you check out brands like AUKEY, they make the exact same thing for a fraction of the cost. Goal Zero’s Yeti is pretty rad, but there are defn cheaper options. However, having a mobile(ish) PV cell and battery pack is essential. Even in Armageddon I’d want my survival guide PDF I’ve got on my smartphone which wouldn’t work without electricity!

If the kids were home, I would have them fill the water bags designed to go in the tubs and get as much potential flying debris as possible secured to minimize the chances of things flying through the doors and windows. No way to make it zero, but five minutes of tossing things into the gazebo or truck bed (under the bed cover) could save more than enough damage to make it worthwhile. Also, make sure everyone is wearing shoes with good soles to protect them from glass from any blown out windows we do get.
Still, as I sat at my desk one afternoon, eyeing the colorful salads my coworkers were having for lunch, I realized the absurdity of my experiment: I live in a city with 24/7 access to fresh food and work a job that affords me the privilege of eating healthfully most of the time. Even quibbling over the nutritional content of these freeze-dried meals was something of a luxury, because I wasn’t in a position where I actually needed to eat them. Then again, you never know what’s going to happen.

My two cents worth here. Go with 5 gallon buckets. Many purchased from the local donut shop at $1.25. My variation on Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers — a chunk of dry ice, about 3×4 inches. With this on the bottom of the bucket and little piece of paper towel over it, pour in rice or beans or wheat or corn or a mixture of things. Put the lid on, but do not snap it tight. Wait a few minutes until the bottom of the bucket is not real cold and snap the lid on. Dry ice, which is CO2, forces out the air in the bucket. I recently opened rice and a mixed container which had been sealed five years ago. Everything was fine. Obviously we did eight or 10 of these buckets at once. Got dry ice from the local grocery store. Be sure to wear gloves when handling it.

I know there are quite a few things we need to be aware of that could turn our world upside down, but having clean drinkable water does not get the credit it deserves. Is this because we are so used to the water just coming out of the faucet and we take it for granted. There will never be a water shortage on this planet, but there will be a drinkable water shortage. Have a look at this article about the looming water shortage.

It doesn’t even take something exotic like Ebola. A bad strain of the flu could overload our medical system and push society to the edge of collapse – and maybe beyond. Preparedness is going to be essential in any kind of major outbreak. Expect stores to be quickly emptied by panic buying, and then probably looting; hospitals won’t be able to cope, and everyone will be forced back onto their own resources. That’s why it’s vital to have those resources.
We liked the Rice Pilaf because it had actual vegetable content! Whole peas and large slices of carrot. No other company has this much vegetable content, not even Mountain House. With chicken broth, white rice, and a surprising addition of orzo, this meal was excellent, especially with some of the freeze-dried chicken included in the Premier bucket.
Oerafajokull volcano in southeastern Iceland, the largest active volcano and the highest peak in Iceland, is showing clear signs of unrest with an inflation phase for at least a year and a half. The last eruptive episode of this volcano started in August 1727 and ended in May 1728. The inflation is ongoing and is reflected by increased seismicity and characteristic deformation pattern, Icelandic Department of Civil Protection said July 13, after a series of meeting with scientists from The Icelandic Meteorological Office, The University of Iceland and Iceland Geosurvey.

The eruption of Mt Fuji will indicate that an east/west fault line has fractured, allowing Northern Honshu to slide into a 6500 metre ocean trench. Earthquakes of the past 90 days in the eastern side of Japan has weakened it’s foundation, a porous sub-structure; a land of a volcanic substance. The resulting tsunamis’ will wipe-out millions of humans in the Pacific region as well as severely destabilizing the Earth’s crust, resulting in the dislodging of the Western & Eastern Antarctic ice sheets. This massive loss of weight from the continent of Antarctica will result in an asymmetric rotation of the Earth and so cause the isostasy (Balance of the Earth’s crust.) to become unbalanced. Crust displacement at Magnitude 12+ will then occur until the Earth’s crust reaches equilibrium, while at the same time hundreds of volcanoes will erupt, lands will disappear and have an extreme destabilizing effect on the climate patterns.

We thought about the generator / gas dilema for our filled 2 freezers, and decided to start our venture into solar with generating enough energy to run those. So far so good.We know that as long as we can run them for 12 hours a day, the food inside stays well frozen and safe. New England winters are cold enough at night that it keeps the garage cold where the freezers are, so thats a help. If we only open the freezer long enough to take out enough food for a few days, they can thaw in the fridge and that helps too. I love my freezer, lol.
I prep on two levels: first, for events that might cause a bit of social unrest and all of the food in my local supermarket to quickly disappear – a financial collapse, say – and, second, for something bigger: a national pandemic, a major environmental catastrophe. For the first scenario I’ve organised a reliable supply of clean water and a store of long-shelf-life food, and then some practical stuff: stitches for wounds, analgesics, antibiotics, a whole range of meds you wouldn’t normally have, various kinds of equipment needed to start a fire. I have go-bags at home and in my car, because you never know where you’ll be when something happens, and I’m part of a prepping community that has an equipment cache stored in a secluded spot near to my house. If there’s some kind of cataclysm? I’ve organised escape routes, away from the general population. You’ll find me above 900ft – or out of the country.
I have been storing firewood. I also have two camp stoves, a single burner and a double burner. When things first fall out, my intention is to use the wood in one or more rocket stoves to heat water. Hot water will be a necessity for sanitation, utensil washing and general hygiene. The camp stoves will be used for cooking. That will continue until the fuel is exhausted. By that time I hope to have gained enough experience that I will be able to modulate the wood burning rockets stoves so that cooking on them will not be that much of a problem. I also plan to use wood burning to distill water as I anticipate that we will need to use ocean water for our water supply unless we just happen to have a wet year such as we are experiencing this year. If it were last year, we definitely would be distilling ocean water. Ocean water doesn’t have to be distilled for washing utensils, hands and clothing. It must be boiled however because there will be all sorts of stuff floating in the ocean that you wouldn’t want to touch let along wash with. Drinking water and water for face washing and teeth brushing will have to be distilled as one cannot drink salt water. I would recommend dehydrated foods for getting used to outdoor cooking, but for long term food you are going to need beans and rice. You can store a lot of calories in a small space for a long time with those two items. Beans and rice together release the protein in the beans to supplement the meat you eat. I always wondered why Mexican food featured beans and rice at the same meal. I thought it was overkill on carbs. Then I found out that the rice released the protein in the beans which otherwise was locked and unavailable.
The Subterra Castle covers 34 acres of estate, including an airstrip, and other facilities. The silo which was bought by Ed Peden for only $40,000 transformed this former junk heap to a modern day castle. The complex tunnels of the site stays 10-15 feet underground. The family just needs to make sure they stock up with emergency food and other basic needs, then they can sleep well knowing that they are safe from almost everything.
It’s impossible to carry all the food you will need for a week unless you’re eating very high density proteins like nuts. Nuts and dried meat are two of the easiest off-the-cuff meals. Canned food has a lot of water that is wasted during the cooking process. Stay away from heavily flavored or salted nuts. The amount of salt present in the unsalted nut mixes is still sufficient enough to replace electrolytes.
MRE’s are not bad. I would not eat them for an extended period of time. They’re either short term or transitional food. Short term is 1-2 weeks. Transitional is going from whatever came from the grocery store over to your long term storage food. The down side with consuming MRE’s and freeze drieds- they’ll plug you up. Drink plenty of water! Good reason to keep metamusal around. MRE Tabasco is a tiny bottle good for one meal. Alternate MRE heating. Open the salt packet up and sprinkle the salt grains onto a hot flat metal surface, lay your MRE on… Read more »
I know that you two are really heavily focused on gear, but I think something like having a solid stock of mason jars (various sizes) to fill with preserves would be a far better option then your plastic air tight sealing bags that will quickly run out in most situations. Why not just use ziplock bags if you must? For that matter, you’d probably want to have a big pot and a few key tools to cook your preserving in.

Freeze-dried food is nothing new. As early as the 13th century, the ancient Quechua and Aymara people of Bolivia and Peru pioneered a form of the process by exposing potatoes to the freezing temperatures of the Andes overnight, then drying them in the sun. In 1937, Nestlé used industrial technology to create the world’s first freeze-dried coffee, and in the 60s and 70s, the US military shipped freeze-dried food rations to the troops in Vietnam.